Seoul assumes mock NK command from US in war game

When North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered his forces to launch a surprise attack on the South Korean island of Baengnyeong in the Yellow Sea, North Korean coastal guns, including 76- and 122-millimeter guns, opened fire. Soldiers from the North’s elite military units entered Gangwon Province via AN-2, an aircraft for low-altitude penetration into the South, and started guerrilla warfare.

These are several hypothetical scenarios in a computer simulation conducted Friday at the “mock central command of resistance (enemy) forces” in the South Korean Joint Chief of Staff in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province. The Joint Chiefs of Staff made public the mock headquarters, which serve as the virtual central command of the North Korean military, in a war game as part the bilateral drill Key Resolve being held March 11-21.

Until last year, this war game was hosted by the Combined Forces Command and the War Training Center within the U.S. Army`s 2nd Infantry Division in Dongducheon, Gyeonggi Province, and served as the mock central command of the North Korean military. But the South Korean military set up another mock headquarters of the North to establish a joint exercise system led by Seoul ahead of the transfer of wartime operational control from the U.S. to South Korea set for December 2015.

The role of the North’s supreme military commander, which was taken previously by the U.S., has also been handed over to the South. At the mock headquarters, a South Korean brigadier general who played Kim Jong Un at the mock center said, “Everything is conducted via the computer, but the exercise is carried out under hypothetical situations that are as close as possible to the reality on the Korean Peninsula by comprehensively reflecting North Korea’s tactical principles, operations plans and combat capability.”

Over the same hours, a mock exercise by the Combined Forces Command countering the North`s military was conducted at the Combined Battle Simulation Center at the U.S. military base in Seoul’s Yongsan district. When wartime operational control is transferred to Seoul, the Joint War Simulation Center, which will be built within the Defense Ministry in Yongsan by 2014, will serve as the South Korea-U.S. combined forces.

The war game involves 17 military units, including six South Korean, three U.S. units in South Korea, seven from the U.S. mainland, and one U.S. unit in Okinawa, Japan. The battle simulation center is interlinked like a spider web with not only the simulation center in Yongsan, but also major military bases on the U.S. mainland, including Fort Hood in Texas and Scott Air Force base in Illinois, the U.S. military base in Japan, and Pyeongtaek and Osan bases in South Korea.

scud2007@donga.com